musings of a new mom…

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So my little Wendy is almost three weeks old now and I’ve never been more exhausted in my life. I thought I was tired when I was pregnant! Boy, was I stupid for thinking that!

First, I gotta say, I am lucky to have an amazing fiancé who stayed up with the baby for the last two nights so I could catch up on my sleep. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this 🙂 .

A few years ago we would stay up till three in the morning, drinking beers and playing video games. Enjoying each others company, no responsibilities to worry about the next day. When I got pregnant, that all changed. I was tired all the time! It’s hard work making a baby! My fiancé probably wasn’t too pleased that by the time he got off work I’d only be able to hang out him for an hour before getting too tired and going to bed. I’d sleep for ten straight hours. I’d kill for that now !

Nowadays, I take care of the baby all day. Don’t get me wrong, I love it! She’s such a cutie! I just can’t really follow the “sleep when that baby sleeps” advice because a) she’s up every hour during the day to drink breast milk. So i’m ether feeding her or pumping most of the day. b) The house has never been messier. Which makes me feel guilty. So when she’s sleeping I usually try to run around and get something done around the house. c) I didn’t drink any caffeine (except for the occasional soda) during my pregnancy. So now when I drink my much needed frappuccino in the morning, I can’t take a nap for a few hours and need to get a few quick things done (like this post for example 😉 ).

With no real sleep, it’s been easy to get overwhelmed with the housework. Even working on a little here and there throughout the day doesn’t seem to show any progress with new things piling up all the time. Even when the fiancé stays up most of the night to watch the baby, it’s hard not to snap at him for leaving the kitchen a mess after making a late night snack, or leaving his socks and clothes on the floor. I’ve been trying to bite my tongue though because he works so hard for us, it’s just not worth it.

I don’t know how you working mommies do it! Mad kudos to you all!

ps: Sorry for the rant-y post! Trying to stay positive :D. Expect a new tutorial soon!

Like this:

Wow! It’s been a crazy couple of days!! On Friday I started feeling mild contractions all day so I busted out my contraction timer app (because there seems to be an app for everything) and started timing while I worked on a crochet pattern. They weren’t very intense or regular so I didn’t take them very seriously. At around 5pm I found out my mom, who lives in Northern California, couldn’t wait any longer, was getting on a plane and expecting to arrive around 1am.

It was a good thing too because at 10:45pm my contractions started to come on hardcore suddenly. I had to lie down and an hour later I couldn’t stand it anymore so we headed to the hospital. In triage we discovered I was already 4 centimeters dilated so I got admitted right away!

The contractions got worst and worst every time. It felt like the worst period cramps ever. You can’t help but cry out. The anesthesiologist took forever to get there. It wasn’t until 3am that he showed up. I got dosed and it was slightly a relief but 20 mins later it still hurt so bad. My nurse noticed and called him back in for a second dose and I finally went numb. I mean super numb. My legs turned into two jelly filled things I couldn’t feel or move and it was soo creepy.

They laid me down on my side and I fell asleep (the epidural worked wonders, clearly). When I woke up I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing! My doctor had them turn off my epidural so I can feel when to push. By then my mom had gotten there so she held one leg while my fiancé held the other. I probably pushed for an hour and a half or so and at the end of the pushing she just came out. My doctor was like “Stop pushing!” to which I said, “I’m not pushing!” and I looked down and there she was! I got to pull her out and I was so overwhelmed with how perfect and beautiful she was I didn’t even feel that I had ripped my vagina. I guess I ripped it up top where it takes longer to heal and hurts more, but I didn’t care. I was holding my little angel!

So I got stitches while everyone filled in the room to see Wendy who was born at 9:19 am on May 16th and was 8.5 pounds, 21 inches long while I was getting stitches. It as pretty embarrassing and made some people pretty uncomfortable I can only imagine.

After a bit we were moved into our postnatal room which was very nice. My fiancé and I started to relax and enjoy some time with our baby, who was refusing to breastfeed (I thought it would be so much easier!). Then I stood up to go to the bathroom and there was blood everywhere. It was a freaking horror show. The nurses were more worried than I was and put me on an IV of pitocin to help contract my uterus and slow down the bleeding. The IV made me start to shiver really bad and I started to run a fever so the nurses woke me up about every twenty minutes to check on me, so it was a very long night.

My fever broke in the middle of the night but because of it they wanted to keep me another night. We spent the day attempting to breastfeed and ended up breaking two of our rules that we had set up for ourselves. We fed her formula and gave her a pacifier. Sometimes rules don’t really matter when your baby is fussy and hungry. We decided that I’m going to pump to feed her and give her formula at night to help her sleep. It has worked great so far and she’s still getting breast milk so that’s all that matters.

We were pretty excited to go home, and when the time came we couldn’t get outta there fast enough. We dressed Wendy up and drove the few blocks home. It was very exciting! Damen ran around showing Wendy off to all the neighbors and our next door neighbor gave us a gigantic box of wipes!

These last few days have gone pretty well, just getting into the swing of things of being new parents. The other night Wendy started crying for hours and we couldn’t figure out what was wrong. It turned out the nipple to her bottle was too small and she wasn’t getting enough food, swallowing mostly air, and getting really bad gas. After that dilemma was solved we looked up how to relieve gas and have found burping her while sitting up and leaning over works best for her. Now we are getting into a pretty comfortable routine and I’m not nearly as exhausted as I was. My stitches are still killing me though and I can’t wait until they are healed, but its a small price to pay for our little bundle of joy!!!